Various alarm clock systems and other monitoring systems exist that operate by collecting some physiological parameters of the user during sleep, and processing the data in order to determine one or more sleep states of the user. Sleep states may be considered as falling into four broad categories: a) the deep sleep state, b) the shallow sleep state, c) the Rapid Eye Movement (REM) state, and d) an intermediate state where the user is partially awake yet partially sleep. Additionally, the data obtained from scientific research implies that the most optimum “waking up” experience is realized when a person transitions from the REM state to the awake state.
Determination of a person's sleep states may be accomplished using known techniques, and a variety of mechanisms exist for controlling and regulating the wake-up and snooze alarms based on such techniques. In one example alarm clock system, a wake-up alarm is triggered based on a user-defined wake-up time, following which either the user acknowledges this alarm or where the alarm is automatically disabled after a predefined period of time. Subsequent to this event, the first of a series of snooze alarm modes is automatically enabled. At this point in time the user must perform some action to disable the first or all of the snooze alarm modes. Also, depending on the sleep state of the user during the subsequent snooze alarms, the user may or may not respond to the subsequent snooze alarms.